Food and travel

For travel writer Caroline Eden, people and food are at the heart of every trip. In her latest book she journeys through Central Asia, bringing the region to life with recipes garnered along the way.

From the shop owner with a Covid-friendly cheese vending machine to the creator of a modern British brie, meet the people at the forefront of the UK's cheese industry. 

Some dessert menus are worth travelling for. From an opulent golden orb to a decadent reworking of a thousand-year egg, here’s our pick of the world’s most iconic chocolate creations.

How successfully can meal kits replicate the restaurant dining experience at home? We try out kits from Dishoom, Hoppers, Padella and more.

The comedian talks all things culinary, from falling in love with coconut sambal in Sri Lanka to why he’ll never take photographs of his dinner.

From country pubs to award-winning pie shops, there are plenty of places to get your steak and kidney fix.

Thessaloniki is Greece’s gastronomic heart, a melting pot city that’s constantly evolving. But when it comes to Greek cooking, some things aren’t to be messed with — no matter how modern life gets.

From perfectly prepped couscous to generous helpings of harissa, Tunisian cuisine is all about colour, flavour and abundance. In the coastal town of Nabeul, a family meal becomes a feast when guests are involved — and extra helpings are inevitable.

Pitmaster Pat Martin spends his working day barbecuing and his free time grilling — two very different things if you’re in the American South, where cooking is as much about the journey as the destination.

In central Spain, the Cabra have farmed some of the world's highest-quality saffron for four generations, using a meticulously hand-produced and largely unchanged approach.

In Sicily, Laura Lupo makes products such as pesto and torrone from her own highly prized Bronte pistachios.

In rural Quebec, Pierre Faucher has been tapping maple sap and turning it into syrup for almost 40 years.

Once a nation of nomads, today’s Kyrgyzstan is dotted with yurts only in summer. For most of the year, Kyrgyz shepherds live settled lives in the valleys, but from June to September, when the lowlands are arid, they move to summer mountain pastures, known as jailoo. 

The hills just outside Alba, in northwest Italy’s Piedmont region, are striped with neat green rows of trees and vines. The area is renowned for its wines and white truffles, but the jewel in its crown is the nocciola del Piemonte, a delicate variety of hazelnut with thin skin and crisp, dense flesh. The terroir here is ideal for these nuts: the slopes allow the soil to drain, while the altitude and climate provide the perfect temperature for the trees.

There can be few institutions more synonymous with the East End of London than pie ’n’ mash shops.